Book Bashing Trump Is True, According To His Biographer

By: Jim Owen | May 12, 2018

The author of a 2015 biography about Donald Trump confirmed Sunday that a new book slamming the president is mostly correct.

Michael D’Antonio, who wrote “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success,” said the unflattering revelations in “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff “seem true to the man.” The Huffington Post noted that D’Antonio, a Pulitzer Prize winner, got to know the future president and members of his family while interviewing them for the book.

In an op-ed for CNN, D’Antonio defended Wolff’s accounts of “disparaging things the president says about women and his effort to understand the appeal of white supremacy.” The biographer said he also learned that Trump has a habit of repeatedly telling “anecdotes and stories that sound rehearsed” because he does not understand complex issues.

The president is “bored by briefings and uninterested in details” and thinks “expertise is overrated,” according to D’Antonio, who added that Trump insists upon “extreme personal loyalty.”

The president is lashing out at Wolff, accusing him of fabricating some of the information in “Fire and Fury.”

On Sunday, Trump tweeted: “I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author."

He wrote, "Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!”

D’Antonio alleged that Trump employed a “squid-ink” method of lying to build his real-estate empire. “Falsely claiming that various starlets pursued him for dates, or the British royals were eyeing Trump real estate, he played a game with reality,” the author wrote.

He pointed out that for a “super salesman, this habit was amusing, (but) In a president it is both frightening and dangerous.”

D’Antonio acknowledged that Wolff deserves some criticism. He called his fellow author’s writing style “tabloidy,” and said it is an “incomplete and unsatisfying sketch” to describe Trump was an “idiot surrounded by clowns.”

However, the biographer said the “distortions” of the president and his administration complicate efforts to discern the “true” Donald Trump.

HuffPost reported that one of the president’s lawyers tried to block the release of Wolff’s explosive book, which features critical comments about the Trump team by Stephen Bannon. The former chief White House strategist, a far-right nationalist who runs the conservative website Breitbart News, said it was “treasonous” for Donald Trump Jr. to agree to meet with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer who promised to turn over “dirt” about Hillary Clinton.

Among others who attended the meeting, at Trump Tower in New York City during the 2016 campaign, were Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Trump Jr. claims the lawyer did not have any incriminating information about the Democratic presidential nominee.

The president’s critics cite the meeting as evidence that Trump associates colluded with Russia to interfere in the election. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate the allegation.

He has already filed criminal charges against Manafort and Michael Flynn, the former national security director who lost his job due to his Russian connections.